Looking into the Light: Liza Gabrek continues to make big steps in recovery

Spending months in the hospital undergoing multiple surgeries and rigorous therapy could have seemed a daunting task for Liza Gabrek ‘15. But, in the midst of working to regain the ability to walk, speak and move the left side of her body, Gabrek found the time to exercise her love of Spanish and befriend a maintenance worker named Leo.

Leo gave her some small advice that turned into a philosophy to live by: Ve a la Luz, or ” look to the light.” This forward thinking philosophy became the mantra that the Gabrek family lives by as they undergo the trying process of helping Liza recover from a stroke.

“One of my favorite cards that we got said ‘find the sunshine and then you will not see the shadows,’” mother Elaine Gabrek said. “Look towards what’s in front of you and keep working towards that. Be positive.”

On April 15, 2014, during an LT soccer game on Bennett Field, Liza suffered a stroke and was rushed to LaGrange Memorial Hospital. When her condition worsened, the on-call doctors at LaGrange realized that the situation was “out of their hands” and decided to move her to Loyola Hospital, father Pete Gabrek said.

When she arrived at Loyola, she was immediately taken into a four-hour long neuro surgery which preceded a five-week stay at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Loyola. An angio-gram revealed a diagnosis of the hereditary condition MoyaMoya, which had caused the complications of Liza’s stroke and seizure.

The Gabreks found that they were in good hands when they discovered her surgeon was a world-renowned expert on MoyaMoya, Pete said.

MoyaMoya means “puff of smoke” in Japanese, and it describes how the condition looks when observed on an MRI. With MoyaMoya, instead of strong, divided vessels transfering blood to an area of the brain, the MoyaMoya vessels are small, thin and jumbled intertwining vessels that do not allow efficient blood flow to the brain, resembling a puff of smoke, Elaine said. Liza’s condition is unique in the sense that the MoyaMoya was only found on one side of her brain, when it is typically bilateral.

After surgery Liza was unable to speak—she communicated through writing— and had limited mobility, but the Gabreks knew she would be okay during a simple game of catch that they were playing with a ball that strengthened her grip, two and a half weeks after surgery.

“We were playing catch for about 15 minutes, and I think she just got sick of it,” Pete said. “So, instead of throwing it back to someone she just threw it behind her. It was early on, she couldn’t talk and one eye was still shut, but we knew that she was going to be okay.”

After five weeks at Loyola, she moved to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC), in downtown Chicago where she began intensive physical, occupational and speech therapy centered around regaining function of the left side of her body and walking again. The high intensity and vigor of the therapy that she was going through was often a challange that she needed to overcome daily, Liza said.

“I don’t think I could make it through the whole entire day without me needing to take a break,” Liza said. “That was definitely one of the most difficult things.”

The entire Gabrek family credits support from the community as a driving force behind getting through the recovery process with so much success. While they were in the hospital, still multiple fundraisers were held by community members and various soccer programs, including Liza’s club soccer team, Windy City pride. Childhood friends and neighbors arranged to bring dinners to the family—bringing almost six months of food to the family—and the LT soccer team held a 5v5 tournament in her name.

“We have no experience with this, and we didn’t ask for this, but we just do what we can,” Pete said. “So between family, friends, community and the school district we all did it together, it wasn’t just us. We couldn’t begin to do this alone.”

Although her therapy is still intensive, she has made enough progress to return to school to finish out her senior year. She takes math and Spanish at school, and is fulfilling the rest of her other requirements through home-schooling, in which she has tutors come to her house. Socially, Liza has stayed involved in the LT community with enthusiasm by continuing to work with LT’s Yearbook Tabulae staff and gracefully accepting the 2014 homecoming queen crown.

“Coming back to school was actually kind of a relief, because I got to be back with the people that I’ve been around these past three years,” Liza said. “I actually couldn’t wait for it because it was like I was being back with my family again. And LT’s like a family to me. It’s a good support system. Not only the school but some of my teachers that I haven’t seen in a while were really supportive of me coming back, and when I got elected for homecoming queen, that was really cool just being elected, because it showed how the community had come to support me and show me that they really do care.”

One of her current teachers and home tutor during first semester, LT Spanish teacher Amy Huckstadt, has been impressed with Liza’s enthusiasm and determination in school.
“She’s super determined and motivated to learn,” Huckstadt said. “She never gave up. And after all she’s been through, it would be easy not to put forth as much effort, but she goes above and beyond. I think that she is very inspiring to people.”

As for her future plans, Liza plans to attend Loyola University in Chicago to study nursing, which wouldn’t have been her chosen path without the influence of her experiences this past year. She had always wanted to be in the medical field, but after her accident the nurses that aided her recovery helped her to narrow her focus to mainly the  nursing field.

“[The nurses] provided a personal aspect to my recovery. They were my personal translators and explained what the doctors were saying,” Liza said. “Because of them I had a better form of understanding of what was going on in my stay. I could not be more thankful for them, and that’s a massive part of why I want to become a nurse.”

Although Liza has made incredible steps forward in her recovery, she does acknowledge that there is a long way to go until she’s fully recovered. But, until then, she continues to “Ve a la Luz,” and tackle challenges:

“[The most difficult part of the recovery] is still to come,” Liza said. “It’s almost been one year since my injury, and I’ve come so far, but if I take this realistically, I have so much farther to go. In the big scale of things, what I’ve accomplished is like a pea size compared to a huge planet size of what I have to do. I am so up to  the  challenge. I’m going to take it head on.”